Maximizing Employee Happiness and Well-being: An Examination of Value Creation and Competitive Advantage at Zappos

A successful organization must embrace a vision, mission, and strategy that creates long-term value and makes all relevant stakeholders happy. In this paper, a foundation for the concepts of happiness and well-being in the workplace is established. A historical perspective of management theories is discussed along with twenty-first century leadership philosophies that have evolved out of these historical perspectives. Employee happiness and well-being is discussed in more detail along with their place in the larger field of positive organizational behavior (POB) and psychological capital. In the modern global workplace, we can see how online retailer Zappos and their CEO Tony Hsieh have created, nurtured, evolved and outwardly shared a culture and management philosophy that promotes employee happiness. Objective benefits occur when top managers incorporate employee happiness and subjective well-being into their holistic management philosophy and practices. In the effort to build sustained long term value for all stakeholders, leaders and indeed all employees will need to continually practice ways to build psychological capital and maximize happiness and well-being.